


It only gets worse, doesn't it?

by d__T



Series: It's Not A Nightmare If You Don't Die [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: It chews on the architecture pretty good, The apocalypse starts at a generic new england university, light fatalism, this apocalypse is not a plague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24029491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d__T/pseuds/d__T
Summary: You're minding your own business.You don't know how bad it's gonna get until it gets that bad.
Series: It's Not A Nightmare If You Don't Die [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/901296
Kudos: 3





	It only gets worse, doesn't it?

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for plagueposting

You’re minding your own business.

Everyone is minding their own business. Objectively that’s not true, there’s people gossiping in the quad, students arguing with professors, 75% of a practice rehearsal around the obelisk-atom monument in the middle of the courtyard. But it is an overcast day that can’t decide if it will rain or not, the bottom layer of clouds seeming to sit just above the rooflines of the buildings and it’s got everyone a little subdued. It’s the kind of day that makes New England goths drag their cameras outside and take obscene numbers of pictures of the stonework.

You, specifically, are minding your own business on a bench to one side of the courtyard. You’ve got a book that you’re reviewing in hopes that maybe you’ll finally pick up some damn information in one hand and a snack in the other. You haven’t eaten a meal that your mother would call ‘proper food’ in a week and that’s just how it is.

It starts raining.

The first chunk lands twenty feet away, red hot and hissing in the damp grass. More fall down, zipping through the tree-cover and bouncing off of the sidewalks and all of you in the courtyard are frozen like figures in a diorama that the creator is shaking a handful of gravel into. That moment lasts, stretching between the all too recent past and the all too distant future and you’ve almost thinking  _well it’s been that kind of year_ when someone starts screaming and everything vaults into motion.

You shove your book into your bag and bolt for the nearest building- there’s a little crush at the door there as everyone has the same idea at the same time, but it’s not too bad because the damp weather had kept most people inside. Once inside everyone, you included, cluster up against the plate glass windows beside the doors like those won’t shatter if one of the falling rocks so much as grazes the panes to watch. The smaller rocks bounce and roll, eventually coming to smokey halts, and the largest ones leave steaming fist sized holes in the landscaping.

And then it stops raining.

It’s silent. There’s people murmuring, the faint clatter of breathing and people texting their friends, but over all of that is silence. There’s no sirens, no shouting. No emergency response.

On a hunch you check your school email. There’s no communication, not even a shelter in place order. There’s nothing from your professors- yet- and you can’t wait for that shitshow if and when it starts.

Your next class is  _soon_ and while other people are venturing back outside, you elect to take the much more sheltered route that snakes through buildings and service tunnels to get there. You’re not the only one and normally none of you would acknowledge it because as students, none of you are supposed to know about these tunnels, but this time: all of you are down here for the same reason. Everyone has questions and there’s not a single answer.

Everyone is acting normal. The professor says something to the effect of  _well that was weird, haha_ before proceeding with the lesson. But you can feel it, too. Everyone is distracted, eyes on the windows, thumbs on their phones under the table. Nothing unusual, except that the internet is exploding.

There’s no answers there, either, just the news that this isn’t an isolated incident. That it’s an ongoing incident. No one is saying to not worry yet, but nobody is saying to worry, either. Everyone is panicking and saying they’re not. 

The two hours of lecture pass in a haze; you’re sure that you heard words about topics but you would not be able to say which words about what. After it lets out, you go outside.

There’s a surreal sense of repetition to this. The day is exactly as it was before, only the burning rocks have all been pushed off of the walkways. They’ve left behind little scorch marks and trails of soot. People are congregating outside again; nothing’s a problem until it’s  _really_ a problem. You look around and there’s an available bench over by one of the older buildings, opposite from where you were sitting before. The thought that the smaller panes in lead molding might be harder to break than the modern plate glass of the newer buildings comes as an afterthought.

You’ve just got your book out again when it starts to rain.

The cloud cover above the obelisk-atom bows open, stretching like too much water pouring out of a plastic bag, like the way the sun looks in photographs: blacked and scarred, like cracking skin over a burn.

It is nothing like it is in the movies: everything is completely silent. There’s no ominous rumble to warn you. People aren’t looking, and you’ve depended on being invisible for so long that you cannot shout, voice dead in your throat. You abandon your book, your bag only coming with you as you bolt  _away_ because one strap was already over your shoulder.

People are running after you- you’d gone up the slight hill towards the back of campus, between two buildings. The ground there is shaped into an embankment with a concrete retaining wall projecting from one of the buildings. It has a railing along the top edge. First up the hill but people quickly catching up to you, you turn and go behind the railing. It is protected, as much from the people as it is from whatever is happening.

You are still too close.

It has cut through the clouds and now you can feel the heat of it like the blast from an oven but so much worse. Drying, cracking, it pours across the courtyard in a swath like water from a dropped pitcher only it has the thickness of lava, of cold syrup, of-

The heat is pressing on your face, pushing you back. You escape up to the next level of the embankment; another concrete wall, another railing. There’s more people up there. One of them is someone you recognize, Ben. You were acquaintances before, and only later you will realize that by standing next to each other and saying  _what the fuck_ as this all happens you are now friends.

The stream of destruction cuts through one of the buildings like a plasma cutter. This is also nothing like it is in the movies. It’s like it is in the news; the thick greasy black smoke crawling out of the cavity in the building, the burning red seeping out through the darkness, all of the broken and crumbling masonry and exposed girders bending and falling as the building loses structural integrity.

The people around you have fled; it's just you and Ben now. He's saying  _come on we gotta go._

But you stay, shielding your face against the wall of heat.

And then it stops.

After a few long moments, you slowly pick your way down to the lower embankment, and then around the wall of that one to the level of the courtyard below. It's been gutted, which you could well see from your post above, but it is worse up close. The gash is wider than you could jump, wider than you could reach across, and the bottom- you can see it but it's still liquid and glowing. It veers through the courtyard and a building and out the other side like a cut from a carelessly waved laser. There is, or was, melted building flowing down the the walkway on the other side. Halfway down the hill, one of the little tractors that facilities uses for lawn maintenance is burning enthusiastically, and half of a statue is missing, the bronze flash melted and poured down the side of the stone as the catastrophe passed it by.

There's a fire alarm going off somewhere. It feels so pathetically inadequate like yeah, there's a fire.  **beee beee beeeoo** . Thanks.

_We should go_ , Ben says from behind you.

_Where the fuck is safe from that?_

He shrugs.

People are starting to appear now; faces pressed against windows in undamaged buildings, from around corners and from inside. What is there to say? people are pointing and talking to each other in a low chatter of distress. It hasn't sunk in yet that people have died. Later you will wonder how you didn't think of it sooner. There are still no sirens other than the fire alarm still keeping its sentry.

No response; it's just you and everybody else against this.

_Let's go_ you say. You and Ben start walking in unison.

_What if it comes back?_

_We run._

He reuses your words  _but where is safe from that?_

You shrug.  _Wherever it isn't._

_That won't last forever._

_I know._

You're far enough to away now that you can only see the rising smoke of the burning building. You pull out your phone.

The email from the school is at the top of your inbox. It is urging you to stay calm and seek shelter; the situation is being closely monitored. The timestamp is from before-

You feel the urge to laugh boil up your throat and break free into the worst sound that you have ever made.


End file.
